CALAMITY HOWLER/A.V. Krebs

How About a Populist Movement?

Many valuable political lessons can be learned by today's body
politic from the 19th century's agrarian populist movement.

When viewing today's political landscape, however, that promise
seems rather remote. Clearly what Bush and his right-wing
co-conspirators seek is to transform this nation from a populist
republic into a corporate plutocracy.

What is needed is the inauguration of a progressive populist
movement as opposed to simply another politics-as-usual party.

One can measure the success of the "agrarian revolt" of the late
1800s in the US by the manner in which corporate America subsequently
reacted so viscerally in the century that followed. For the hallmark
of that revolt was that our nation's abused family farmers defiantly
proclaimed the Jeffersonian ideal that one cannot have political
democracy without economic democracy.

While economic democracy was a stated goal of the Farm Alliance in
the late 1800s, as its members declared in their Omaha Platform of
1892, it also represented a rebellion against the American political
party system of the day. In order to restructure the nation's
financial and economic system, the Alliance came to reject, as many
of us do today, both major political parties, which they accused of
being in "harmony with monopoly."

It is true that the populists would lose the presidential election
of 1892 and 1896, the latter campaign dominated by big money and mass
advertising, a campaign some historians have described as setting
"the creative standard for the 20th century." But it is undeniable
that in those years the agrarian populists also initiated what
independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader has called "the
country's most fundamental political and economic reform movement
since the Constitution was ratified."

One of the most noteworthy principles that emerged out of the
"agrarian revolt" at that time which has particular relevance to our
times was spoken by William Lamb, the leader of the Alliance radicals
and perhaps populism's most articulate theoretician, in a historic
1886 open letter to the "Rural Citizen."

As business became more economically concentrated, Lamb contended,
farmers who continued to strive for friendship and parity with the
commercial world were simply failing to comprehend "what is going on
against us." Members of the Alliance, he wrote, had to put aside such
naivete.

"We think all members should show the world which side they are on
and we are looking forward for men that will advocate our interests,
those who are working against us are no good for us ... Then for it
to be said that we are unwise to let them alone, we can't hold our
pens still until we have exposed the matter and let it be known what
it is we are working for."

As Populist historian Norman Pollack stresses, citizens must now,
as they did in the 19th century Populist movement, challenge the
strident materialism of our day and "work to achieve a democratized
industrial system of humane working conditions and production for
human needs."

The 19th-century populists sought to build a society where
individuals fulfilled themselves "not at the expense of others but as
social beings, and in so doing attain a higher form of
individuality." A society we should strive for in the 21st century is
one to be judged not at its apex, but at its base; that the quality
of life of the masses should be the index by which we measure social
improvement. Our populism must undertake to remain a radical social
force within political systems that provide little opportunity for
expression of radicalism.

We cannot wed ourselves to a politically expedient populism
characterized by racist and xenophobic attitudes. As Alliance for
Democracy co-founder Ronnie Dugger notes: "The 21st-century
populists' critique of existing arrangements must go beyond economic
conditions to embrace individuals' plight. They must address the
dehumanization and loss of autonomy in a society that rapidly reduces
the individual to being dependent on someone else's decision, laws,
machinery and land.

The 19th-century Populist movement's recognition, for example, of
the plight of family farmers and labor and the efforts made on their
behalf were premised on the idea that unless society was attuned to
their needs it ceased to be democratic. Unless all people are free no
one is free.

If populists in alliance are to replace today's corporatist
culture, they must adopt an ideological framework built on aggressive
advocacy and create a "movement culture." Such a populism will have
to be characterized by an evolving democratic culture in which people
can see themselves working together and aspiring to a society
conducive to mass human dignity.

People must also recognize clearly the imminent dangers of the
"corporatist" culture and educate and work to bring that corporate
state under democratic control. Thus, rather than isolate and
concentrate on "issues," 21st-century populism must focus on the
system, for the system has become the issue.

In proceeding to build what the pre-eminent Populist historian
Lawrence Goodwyn has described as the "sequential process of
democratic movement-building," we can learn valuable lessons from the
19th-century populists.

We must develop horizontal communication between such groups of
people and individuals both within our own communities and nation and
then begin to build an international populism all as suggested in Sam
Smith's incisive commentary "The Election is Over -- We Lost: Now on
to Nov. 3" [4/1/04 TPP].

We can teach each other what each of us learns and knows and what
mistakes we make -- a development that can be described as "movement
forming." In developing such a system of communication we also create
a forum and environment whereby we can continue to attract masses of
people -- "the movement recruiting."

By proceeding in such a fashion, keeping in mind a commitment to
the creative nonviolence and democratic process, and remembering that
populism seeks to replace corporate power with democratic power,
people can begin a culturally unsanctioned level of social analysis
-- "the movement education."

Finally, 21st-century populists, in alliance, will create an
institutional means, not necessarily a political party, whereby new
ideas, shared now by the rank-and-file of a mass political, social
and cultural movement, can be expressed in an autonomous political
way -- "the movement politicized."

After the agrarian populists adopted the Omaha Platform of 1892
they circulated it far and wide not only seeking support for its
provisions, but using it as a guide to which candidates they would
support for public office. Few people realize that they were highly
successful on the state level and in Congress, despite the fact that
their success has always been falsely measured by historians by their
failure to win the presidency in 1892 and 1896.

Certainly a major step by family farmers, consumers, and workers
toward restoring a government of the people, by the people and for
the people would be to revive and inaugurate a serious political
populist movement.